You might want to look here for more details on the procedure, but yes, it involves cookies. I would guess that if you clear cookies from your browser before buying online, you are pretty much protected against having your name (through your facebook ID) associated with your purchase information, if I understood TFA correctly.

Sara Chan writes: The European Science Foundation has just held the first World Conference on Research Integrity. A major conference topic was the fraud allegation against SUNY professor Wei-Chyung Wang. Wang's research has been crucial evidence that urbanization effects are insignificant in global warming studies (and Wang's research was relied upon in the latest report from the IPCC). Now it has been alleged that Wang's research was fabricated. The Daily Tech has the story. The allegation was made by mathematician Douglas Keenan, whose report is clear and disturbing. Wang's university has begun an investigation.

Hugh Pickens writes: "The world's biggest solar farm with more than 400,000 mirrors was built in the 1980's and still generates 354 megawatts, enough to power more than 900,000 houses. Now due to a federal energy credit, the enactment of renewable energy standards in many states, and public antipathy to coal fired power plants, large scale Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is making a comeback. Scientific American reports that the first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to the neon lights of Vegas this summer. Although CSP proponents claim that a solar thermal power plant built on about 1% of the surface of the Sahara Desert would be sufficient to satisfy the entire world's electricity demand, a key problem has been energy storage during the night. One company, Ausra, claims to be solving the storage problem without using molten salts or other expensive means of conserving heat and estimates that the price of its electricity will drop to roughly 8 cents per kilowatt hour if it can store heat for 16 hours. Their system will employ pressure and a steam accumulator to accomplish the trick. "You allow some of the steam to recondense," a spokesman explains. "It flashes back to steam when you reduce the pressure just by opening the valve to the turbine.""

perturbed1 writes: Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg "disses manned spaceflight" according this Article, calling the International Space Station(ISS) "an orbital turkey," saying that "no important science has come out of it." Weinberg points to NASA's treatment of its Beyond Einstein program (designed to test the Theory of General Relativity) as an example of the agency's misplaced priorities, commenting that "if we suddenly run into extra expenses in the manned spaceflight program, that will be put on the back burner, just as has been done time and time again by NASA."

Weinberg forgets about the largest scientific payload of the space program designed for the ISS, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a particle physics experiment designed to search a dark matter signature in cosmic rays. Another Nobel laurate, Samuel Ting leads AMS which cost about $1.5 billion and has been long waiting for a shuttle flight as discussed in this article.

boxlight writes: "US dollar and Canadian dollar are now equal; on par for the first time since 1976.

This is actually bad for the profits of Canadian corporations that sell their products to the US for US dollars (Canada sells far more to the US that the US sells to Canada); but it's pretty cool from a perception level.

It also means us Canucks will get cheaper Macs as the Canadian prices get closer to US prices with every new release.;)"Link to Original Source

perturbed1 writes: The founder of the FSF which just released GPLv3, Richard M. Stallman, gave a talk at CERN a few weeks ago where he talked about the ethics and practice of free software. A video of his talk is
now available in the free ogg format through this site. After explaining the motivation and ethics of free software, RMS went into the history of GNU/Linux (around minute 49 in the video), insisting that GNU be included in the name of the distribution to give credit to the free software developers who do not work on the kernel and to avoid confusion. "This confusion led people to think that the whole system was Mr. Torvalds' work and [...] think that the whole system came from his vision of the world." What was surprising was the ensuing was a rather strong criticism of Linus Torvalds, the main developer of the kernel. Starting at the 57th minute:

"Torvalds does not support the ideas of freedom that I have been telling you about. He never did. [...] He calls himself apolitical which refers to the political position that we should make important political decisions according to short term practical convenience. He says he values powerful reliable software and that's all. He is against the idea that all users should have freedom and he has demonstrated this by conspicuous involvement with non-free software. [...] What I object to is that people think that our work was done by him and when our work serves as the platform for him to state his views and to drown us out. [...] So please call the system GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux. [...] But, there is something more important at stake and that's called freedom. There are people who would like to take away your freedom. The only way to keep your freedom is if you are prepared to defend it. " (Listen on for more... )

Who knows? Maybe/. will lead the way by renaming the "Linux" section, the "GNU/Linux" section?

zentropa writes: So, Is This The End Of The Koala? Australian magazine Cosmos reports that extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and expanding urban development are exacting a heavy toll Australia's koalas and might push the species towards extinction in the wild within a decade. Could this be the end of the cuccly Australian icon, they ask.

arobic writes: "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum established a map of the Darfur genocide which can be visualized using Google Earth. The idea is to make people aware of the atrocities going on in Sudan by means of technology to reach and educate the younger generation about historical and present human crises."

gbridge writes: The Times is reporting that diabetics have been able to stop taking insulin injections after being given drugs to suppress their immune systems, and having transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood. The trial on fifteen patients resulted in all but two volunteers not needing insulin injections some time after treatment; eleven immediately following the infusion of stem cells, two 12 and 20 months after the procedure. One patient went 12 months without shots, but relapsed a year after treatment after suffering a viral infection, and another volunteer was eliminated from the study because of complications. Encouraging results but more trials are clearly required, with London perhaps conducting research into the therapy within the next 12 months if funding can be found.

Incon writes: Google is holding a day for developers to meet and learn from Google staff at its various worldwide offices. Places at the event are sure to go quicker than hotcakes, so get in quickly. Locations that Developer Day will be held at are: Beijing, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Tokyo and of course at Google HQ in Mountain View.

An anonymous reader writes: The Melbourne 'Age' reports that 'Smart phone maker Palm said on Tuesday it would use a new platform based on Linux to help the company compete better.' Ref: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/

TXU, the largest energy provider in Texas, agreed last night to a $45 billion buyout that would not only be the largest private-equity deal in history but would also feature an unusual twist: The buyers have promised environmental groups they would cancel a slew of coal-fired power plants on the firm's drawing boards.

cupidio writes: Ars Technica is running a feature on Citizendium, the new wiki-based encyclopedia started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. One interesting revelation is that Sanger started work on the project only after talking with John Seigenthaler, victim of a famous Wikipedia hoax that accused him of murder. "When Seigenthaler called, I was already resigned to the necessity of making a competitor to Wikipedia," Sanger says. "The effect of Seigenthaler's call was to make me feel to some extent personally responsible for the injustice that Wikipedia was causing, which made my motivation only stronger. When after six to nine months I saw that Wikipedia wasn't going to make any significant changes, it became clear that it was on me to organize a better alternative, if I could." Can Citizendium get bigger than Wikipedia?

Harvey Chute writes: "A member of Zunerama has discovered that songs downloaded from Zune Pass can be synced to his daughter's Creative Zen. The link has screen grabs showing Zune Pass songs being loaded onto a Creative Zen.
We're monitoring to see what happens over time — i.e. if the songs remain available as long as the Zune Pass is maintained.
LINK — http://zunerama.com/forum/index.php?topic=3079.0 — Harvey
Harvey Chute
Editor, Zunerama
admin@zunerama.com
http://www.zunerama.com/"